Valkyrie

Release Date: 12.25.08


valkyrie: noun. any of the beautiful maidens attendant upon Odin who bring the souls of slain warriors chosen by Odin or Tyr to Valhalla and there wait upon them.

Operation Walküre was the fail-safe orders of the Army Reserve to contain and protect the German people in the event of civil unrest, then seclude and disband the governmental powers thereby appointing a new Chancellor. In short, it would be "cutting the head off the snake". The attempted assassination of Führer Adolf Hitler in lieu of briefcase explosives was disguised as a coup conducted by the SS, who then would be brought to justice by the Army Reserve. As every WWII history buff would know, July 20, 1944 was the intended day of Hitler's death, but it would not come for another nine months as a result of his own suicide.

I think it is safe to say that with Valkyrie, Director Bryan Singer has by leaps and bounds matured from the supernatural of the Marvel universe, but has kept true to his classic theme of good vs. evil. He has brought a rare anecdote from the torrid past of Germany to the screen, enlightening the masses with seemingly impossible courage and strength needed to fight for justice, astonishingly forged by the other side of the Nazi coin. Not since The Usual Suspects has he exhausted the audience with such a mental roller coaster of intrigue and deception, but all the while stimulating the eyes with authentic Reich propaganda, uniforms, and goose-stepping.

Tom Cruise, convincingly portrays Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the principal character who brings Operation Walküre to life, but by no means does he overshadow his equally stellar British support. Bill Nighy (brilliant as General Friedrich Olbricht), Tom Wilkinson (General Friedrich Fromm), Eddie Izzard (General Erich Fellgiebel), Terence Stamp (as the icy Ludwig Beck), and legendary Kenneth Branagh as Major-General Henning von Tresckow are all cogs in the Valkyrie machine, without which would have been an utter disaster. Accompanied with a large German supporting cast, overwhelming long shots of the Bavarian forests, and candid peeks of the Wolf's Lair (among other historical locations), the actors engross the unsuspecting movie watchers into World War II Prussia and it's political meltdown.

This two hour thriller - I say thriller and not action film (despite its rampant war imagery) - is brimming with such intensity at times that scene changes leave you jittery with anticipation, like a junkie looking for his next fix. And even though Hitler himself has very few appearances in the film, each time he looms onto the screen you can feel the animosity exuding from his dissidents like a suffocating fog, opening old wounds that can only be described by history texts and imagined by the current generation, placing you in the shoes of those who dare to defy his reign of terror and ashamedly sympathizing with the not-so-bad bad guys.


Rating: A+